Teeth In The Right Wrong Order

There's a little chart that says when teeth come in, and in what order.

Tragically, I cannot read.

I thought it was bottom middle (got them), top middle (got them), bottom lateral incisor, top lateral incisor, canines, molars.

When our son just lost his SHIT in the middle of the night two nights ago, we did the routine we call "running the checklist."

Gas bubble in need of burping?
Diaper?
Cold/hot?
Anything pinching or poking?
Wants milk?
Wants to be walked?
Any new swollen spots on the gums? (Please note, on this last one, he's been resisting our fingers in his mouth, so we only check the spot where teeth are supposed to be cutting through next.)

Nothing worked. When I offered milk, he bit the holy ever loving crap out of me. He was so exhausted that he was screaming with his eyes closed and his head buried in Daddy's neck. He finally collapsed, utterly worn out, being rocked in my arms.

Last night he slept like an angel, but today he was a fussbudget from the minute he whined himself awake, and who skipped his morning nap. When I went to fetch a mercifully happy baby from his afternoon nap, I took advantage of the giggles to play with him. With his mouth wide open, I saw it.

A big lateral incisor... on top? What? That wasn't next! And from the size of it, it must have cut through... two nights ago. Oh. Some Tylenol or ice might have been nice instead of, oh, letting him suffer.

No wonder people have two kids. You just desperately want to raise a kid without screwing up the way you did with the first one.

Tips for an Easier Christmas Morning

The dreaded wire-ties. If you have a child and have bought them a toy from a regular store, you know why I dread wire-ties.

My inlaws like to buy Fisher Price toys for my daughter, particularly the Little People. That's great, and they're fun toys, but it's usually very frustrating for my daughter because she'll open the present in 5 seconds and then have to wait 45 minutes for me to actually remove the product from the twist ties, wires, strings, cardboard, plastic and reinforced steel that toy companies use in their packaging.

Seriously, what is the purpose? Was there such a rash of shoplifting Little People that they have to practically glue them into the box now? On Christmas Eve when I'm frantically wrapping all of the presents I thought I could get ready in under an hour (ha!) I have been taking presents out of their packaging so that the magic of Christmas morning isn't interrupted by needle-nose pliers and a blowtorch.

There are a couple of ways you can avoid having to do all of the unpackaging yourself:

1 - Amazon Frustration-Free Packaging! Yes, there were already so many reasons to love Amazon, and now here's one more. They are on a campaign to reduce packaging for the products they carry. This year they have a very limited number of toys and items that will come with minimal packaging. If any of these things are on your shopping list I hope you'll buy them from Amazon to send a message to manufacturers.

2 - Buy secondhand: someone else already did all of the unwrapping and assembling. I know a lot of people don't feel it's right to give a child a second-hand toy as a gift. Some of my friends have said that it would make them feel like a bad parent, or like the child might think they didn't love them. I think that's so interesting. Because the kids I've known don't care whether something is new or not, so long as it's all there and looks good and works. And if buying second-hand means mom and dad have money to spend on MORE presents, they're even happier.

Not only are these both great ways to save yourself a lot of unhappy Christmas morning (or Eve) unpackaging, they both eliminate some of the holiday waste destined for our landfills.

I'd love to hear any other tips you have for avoiding the wire-tie blues!

Long Live the Retail Season

It starts with Halloween.
It ends with the January sales.

All hail the Retail Season.
Happy Halloween.
Halloween is over.
Long live Halloween.
Happy Thanksgiving.
Merry Christmas.
Christmas is over.
Long live Christmas.
Happy New Year.
New Year is over.
Long live New Year.
Happy January sales bonanza.
January sales bonanza is over.
The retail season is dead.
All hail the retail season.

Amazon Giveaway Winner!

Well, I procrastinated this all day because I was scared the random number generator would give me a super high number and I'd have to count comments all the way up to 500. I finally bit the bullet and generated the number - it was 139. Luckily, right after that I noticed how to collapse the comments so they were in a big easy to read list. And THEN I re-sized my window so it was 20 comments long and it wasn't hard to count at all.

Like you care though, right? You just want to me to say the winner so you don't have to figure it out yourselves. The winner is Linda of Another Piece of the Pie. I zipped over there to check out her site and she did such a fun drawing, writing all of her entries onto cards and then pulling the winner out of a jack-o-lantern.

After I saw that I wished I'd drawn our winner out of a pumpkin. I'm afraid I'm way too perfectly normal (meaning not nearly as fun or creative) for handwritten notes or jack-o-lantern drawings though, at least tonight.

My husband decided to whisk the sleeping baby off my lap earlier tonight and stash him in his crib where he would remain conveniently asleep until his (meaning my husband's) Plan A was accomplished. Unfortunately, whisking and stashing are not high on the baby's list of things he likes to do, so Plan A backfired and resulted in an hour of crying, inconsolable baby.

Since my Plan A was hold the sleeping baby on my lap while I wrote for a quiet hour, I didn't interfere. After a (very frustrating for him I'm sure) while, he returned the baby to my lap and vanished into some other part of the house, probably to work on plan B which I imagine is watch football and mope.

But let's not talk about moping husbands. Let's check out Linda's site which looks like another blog I'm going to have to start following. Maybe she can use her prize to buy that super cute kitchen for her daughter.

Thanks everyone for participating in our contest. I hope we'll see you again soon here at Perfectly Normal!